I'd also like to point out that the two games you mentioned (Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania) were notorious for knocking you back when you got hit...the cause of the vast majority of deaths associated with both of those games:-)

Also, because unlike Mario, Ninja Gaiden started you out with fairly high difficulty. There were boxers on the very first level where if you mistimed your sword swing even a little bit (easy, because the sword was very short), then they could stunlock and kill you. Level 1, first stage. That's how you tell your players that you're not screwing around.

I think the Mega Man games also "tell your players that you're not screwing around." I have only played them on the PS2 collection, but the first one is very difficult (I haven't even gotten to the later ones).

I think the Mega Man games also "tell your players that you're not screwing around." I have only played them on the PS2 collection, but the first one is very difficult (I haven't even gotten to the later ones).

I think the first Rockman was a little less forgiving than the sequels. It was certainly a lot less polished overall. Then again, it could just be that since I started the series with Rockman 2, it may be that I think the first game is harder just because I haven't played it as much.

I started with Mega Man, and I agree. Try playing them one right after the other, and you'll notice that the controls tightened up significantly with the sequel--which is a huge improvement and makes the platformer much easier.

I guess I should try the subsequent ones again. I think I misspoke earlier.. I think the first one is the only one I played significantly, but I at least played one or two others for a few minutes, and they seemed at first to be just as difficult.

I also had Snake: Rattle&Roll. I was never able to reach the last stage and I consider myself a pretty good gamer. Then some months ago I saw a youtube video where someone beats it in 11 minutes. I hated each and every minute of it, that game was a bit of a child trauma for me haha.

I'll second this. Good lord, I remember spending hours and hours getting thru Death Mountain to find the hammer. Then fighting, fighting, fighting thru that awful path that led to the final palace. Then trying in vain to beat that god damn blue/red Thunderbird (and failing, until 2002 when I could use an emulator and cheat codes). I finally got to see the ending, which was lame, but at least I finished the game.

I'll also second the comments about Ninja Gaiden, which, come to think of it, was much harder

Old 8 and 16 bits games beat the crap out of most recent games when it comes to difficulty. Nowdays it seems it's all about eye candy (cough cough I'm looking at you FFXIII), but the games never last more than 20-30 hours unless they're mmorpgs or really good rpgs/adventure games. And even then they're rather easy and you go through content without much problems. Kids and teenager gamers have no idea what they missed.

Interestingly, I think a lot of the old 8- and 16-bit games were difficult because of poor programming. Bad collision-detection and poor controls are high on the list of what made a lot of games hard. Super Mario Bros. head pretty bad controls--far from the worst on the NES, but probably the worst out of the entire series.

Then you have bad design patterns that were repeated over and over throughout the industry--enemies that respawn if a particular tile goes offscreen, being knocked back uncontrollably by enemies (often into pits), enemies which simply can't be avoided or killed no matter what you try... It's really a combination of these three which made Ninja Gaiden (and many other games) super hard. Difficulty without frustration is hard to achieve, but modern games do better at it.

Of course, death and repetition are what made games last any reasonable amount of time in the early NES days. Before you had passwords and saves, forcing you to master every level to get to the end was part of the experience. That's not universally true--some games like Metroid had an explorative element that extended playing time.

Yeah I guess what you say is true. But there are still a lot of inherent difficulty in old games that isn't related to poor programming/designing/other, but just pure, raw difficulty. I remember some Megaman (Rockman for the purists) games, where you had to actually jump in the last pixel of the platform you were in, because the jump wasn't long enough to reach the next one if you didn't do it. I guess you master it through trial/error and lots of repetitions, but isn't everything in life like that? Maybe I

What, as opposed to being knocked very uncontrollably onto a health pack? Why would an enemy want to do that? Surely knocking you into pits or at least making sure you lose control is pretty high up on the enemy's to-do list, so while I agree with the rest of what you say, this is a strange criticism.

You should also add bad English to the list of things that make some games difficult. What were supposed to be helpful hints become mere cryptic messages. I'm looking at you, original Zelda.Then there were things that simply made no sense. Why could the blue candle only be lit once per screen, forcing you to exit and re-enter it until you've checked every damn bush (or several of them at once, but still) for something shiny? Things like that just made the game longer not by making it harder but simply by increasing the legwork you had to do. I think those were the things I hated most. Bad controls and so on, I could live with - eventually, you learned how to master them. You figured out what the actual collision detection was rather than what it should have been. You understood where a particular enemy would throw you and could use it to your advantage if the guy was really unavoidable. But spending 5 mins on burning bushes just cos the blue candle is rubbish? Please.

One of the towns you can access at the very beginning of the game, there's a kid who tells you to go West. He tells you this even if you haven't been to the first castle yet - which is really annoying because you need to beat the first castle in order to get the jump boots you'll need if you go West...

I spent some time this year replaying Zelda II from the beginning. I made it to the final palace but I haven't beaten the game (in this run) yet. I got frustra

You think that's old? It's been 33 years since I first laid hands on an Atari console (still one of my favorite machines) with its Commodore-produced 6502 CPU and TIA sound/graphics chip (with an amazing 30x20 resolution).

The Famicom was released in 1983 so we're talking about 27 year old technology! Its contemporaries were the Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 5200 SuperSystem, Apple IIc/e, and C=64. (The Mac and Amiga didn't even exist yet.) Ancient, old, ancient technology. But hella fun.

Are you talking about the 2600? The 2600 uses a 6507, not a 6502. Also, was its production outsourced to Commodore? I have never heard that and don't see confirmation in a brief skim of the wikipedia article.

You are correct but it's the same difference really. Just as my 386SX laptop is still a 386, just minus some data lines. Or a 486SX4 is 486 but clocked three times faster. It's the same basic CPU, and yes Commodore owned the company (MOS) that made the 650x, 850x, and 65816. They basically got their PET, VIC20, C64, C128, Plus/4 and other computer CPUs for free (at cost).

You're right, I hadn't realized that Commodore bought MOS (in 1976)....and I realize I'm nitpicking about 6502 vs 6507, but for something like the Atari 2600, it makes a difference since the added limitations (smaller address space, no interrupts) are significant.

I never played much Super Mario Bros., but go all the way back to Mario Bros. (without the "Super"), and I remember dumping $20 into that machine in a single afternoon— and $20 was an outrageous amount of money for an 11-year old in 1983.

You know, one of the truly great things about Mario Bros., one of the reasons I still play it today, from time to time... The two-player mode is great if you want to be a vindictive bastard to your friends.:)

The included games (other than possibly Lost Levels) are also already available on the Wii's Virtual Console for about 5 bucks each. I guess this could be an interesting collector's item for Mario enthusiasts, but for the average schmo just looking for a trip down memory lane, the virtual console route seems like a cheaper and easier way to get these particular games.

The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. has inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick, unfortunately. Mario keeps rising in altitude instead of immediately falling down, which sounds minor but affects you if you're used to running and hitting bricks without stopping like in the original.

For years, I thought I was the only one who ever noticed this, but I see that it's mentioned at TMK [themushroomkingdom.net].

The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. has inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick

I think that *all* Mario games have inaccurate physics when jumping and breaking a brick. If they used accurate physics, Mario would fall to the ground unconscious immediately after whacking his head.

First, Mario punches the bricks with his fist when he jumps.Second, he's saying that All Stars' version of Super Mario Brothers is an incorrect reproduction of the original game. Basically when you jump up and break a block, you keep moving up instead of getting bounced back down. It's kind of an annoying bug once you notice it. But yeah, his word choice was incorrect.:)

Personally I think the NES games didn't look so great on the SNES, particularly the first two. (Super Mario 1 and the game that was re

If we're including pack-in games (which Wii Sports is in North America, but not in Japan), then wouldn't Solitaire be the best selling game of all time? It was "sold" with hundreds of millions of copies of Windows.

Many of the best selling games sales numbers have been boosted due to being part of bundles for at least part of their run. Around here Halo 3:ODST, and Forza 3 were part of an xbox bundle a while ago. Today Futureshop is advertising a barebones xbox, and an xbox with 2 wireless controllers and a hard drive bundled with Halo:Reach. When it was launched in Brazil, you could ONLY get the Premium package with Perfect Dark 0, Kameo:EoP,

Not counting console bundled games like #1 Wii Sports (41.65m) #2 SMB (40.24m),and #4 Tetris ( bundled with original Gameboy, 30.26m), #5 Duck Hunt (included in the NES bundle that came with the orange gun, 28.31m), you might be surprised to find out that Pokemon games are the top contenders with the #3 overall spot held by Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue (31.38m) and #6 Pokémon Gold and Silver (23.11m).

Some other titles are #7 Nintendogs (21.60m), #8 Super Mario World (bundled with the SNES, 20.61m) and #9 Wii Play (20.30m).

I think for bundles the question is whether someone is likely to buy it for the bundled items rather than the game. Therefore, Wii Play shouldn't count since a lot of people buy it mainly for the remote and don't want the game. On the other hand, the Halo bundles mentioned above pretty much all go to people who would be buying Halo anyway if there was no bundle.

If you go by the Wikipedia article and ignore this sort of bundle the top games are Nintendogs (23.26M), Wii Fit (22.61M), Mario Cart Wii (22.55M)

35 million Wiis sold in the US since launch, every copy bundled with Wii Sports. (Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (I know, but it's sourced)) I'm not including Japan (wasn't bundled) and rest-of-world (because I don't know if it comes bundled) but that still beats your Atari number.

Well you could try this [wikipedia.org]. It lists Wii Sports at over 66 million, which is over twice the total number of 2600's sold (according to this [wikipedia.org]). It's kind of in a league of it's own, but then it was also bundled with the console which disqualifies it from the list in some people's eyes. The highest selling unbundled game is Wii Play AFAIK.

Wii Play is overall not so good, but I found both Laser Hockey and Tanks (especially co-op Tanks) to be quite fun. Mine was $10 more than just a Wiimote, but those two games contained within ended up being worth more than $10 to me.

..... I'm talking about the 8-bit 6502 of course.;-) Okay yes it was second-sourced but Commodore still made money off the patent/license times 50 millions NESes sold. They also made-out well on the 16-bit 6502 variant inside the Super Nintendo.

MOS was owned by Commodore. i.e. Same company. In fact one reason Commodore VIC-20 and 64 was so much cheaper than the competition was because they charged Atari, Apple, et cetera thrice the price that Commodore charged itself, so they could sell computers at only $150 each. Atari/Apple couldn't even get close.

..... I'm talking about the 8-bit 6502 of course.;-) Okay yes it was second-sourced but Commodore still made money off the patent/license times 50 millions NESes sold. They also made-out well on the 16-bit 6502 variant inside the Super Nintendo

Umm, Ricoh made the Ricoh 5A22 for the Super Nintendo, which is a variant of the WDC 65c816.

So they are offering the first 4 Super Mario Bros games on one disc for around $30. The same 4 games can be purchased for your Wii through the virtual console for $5 each - totaling $20. I guess if the disc, manual, and soundtrack are worth another $10 to you, then go for it. Otherwise just buy the ones you want (or all 4 of them) as downloads and enjoy the savings.

So they are offering the first 4 Super Mario Bros games on one disc for around $30. The same 4 games can be purchased for your Wii through the virtual console for $5 each - totaling $20.

The disc has the Super Mario All Stars (16-bit) versions of the games. Unless SMAS is on the SNES Virtual Console, you're not getting the same games, you're getting the versions with much better graphics and sound.

On an un-related note, I worked at Funcoland back when the original Playstation and N64 came out. We dealt primarily with used games and we could not keep Super Mario All Stars in stock to save our lives. They'd actually pay up to $30 in store credit to get that collection and nobody wanted to

I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.

I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.

I will never understand why something like mario all stars wasn't more popular among game companies. There's so many old nes properties that were fun, loved by everyone, and could have gotten a huge benefit from a graphical makeover and collection. You'd even see things like the mega man collection for the mega drive, or the snes ninja gaiden collection. But they'd miss the opportunity and make only the most minor of graphic upgrades.

One problem with this approach is that, in terms of development, QA, and (to some extent) art resources, you're basically remaking the entire game. You have to rewrite all the software, redraw all the sprites, rearrange the music, and make sure it all works right in the end. If you're going to do all that, why not make a new game featuring the popular old character instead?

Look at Super Mario All Stars, for instance. You'd think it would be pretty hard to screw that up, right? And yet, they did... Some

I'm not criticising anyone's love of the Mario franchise of games but having gamed for 30-odd years from the ZX Spectrum through the Commodore Amiga and now to PCs, I think I've only ever played one Mario game for a short period of time on a friend's NES.

At Nintendo we're commemorating "Super Mario 25th Anniversary" with a promotion, but at the same time we're planning to release "The CEO Asks" pertaining to Super Mario's history in several installments.

Obviously, we thought to start by bringing to all of you word from the parent who gave birth to Super Mario, Miyamoto Shigeru, but thus far Mr. Miyamoto has appeared in "The CEO Asks" as a guest more than anyone else, and to me, who has asked Mr. Miyamoto the same questions many times, the more I thought abo

I'm guessing that most of them either weren't into gaming or aren't old enough to remember. Personally, I remember that, I also remember the championship edition, which came with the track game and pad. I also remember that crazy robot thing that could play games, the power glove and that awesome light gun. Too bad it doesn't work on non-CRT televisions.

...games released this year will be based on the same characters, plot devices and game mechanics as that title a quarter century ago. It's all summed up in Nintendo's motto: Why create when you can copy?

And yet I would rather play 100 games that feature Mario unnecessarily than yet another greyish-brown FPS where the protagonist is some sort of grizzled space marine. Say what you will about Nintendo and Mario games, but by and large they are fun.

Say what you will about Nintendo and Mario games, but by and large they are fun.

I assume that the people replaying the same FPS with a slightly different skin think that they're having fun, too.

But yeah, all FPS all rely on almost exactly the same mechanics as Doom, and if you consider them merely 3D extensions of 2D mechanics, then they're "using the same mechanics" as e.g. Commander Keen. If it's fair to say that Super Mario Galaxy uses the same mechanics as Super Mario Bros, then my comparison of an FPS to a 2D shooter is fair.

Erm, what? You do realize that the same group of developers that did Dangerous Dave did Commander Keen, right? And that further more apart from being platformers, they really didn't have that much in common.